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It was 103 in Seattle today. Record-breaking misery. Wyatt came wandering into our room at 3 a.m., all hot, sweaty, and disoriented. He slept between us, spreading out as fully as possible, until I was hanging onto the edge, his fist in my face. I moved to the couch, and got a little sleep until 5:00. I lie awake until 6:00, then decided to get up and turn the oven on. I'm either (A) NUTS, (B) needed to use up some leftovers, (C) taking dinner to a sick friend, or (D) all of the above.

All of the above. The reason I pound you over the head with galettes constantly is because they're such a perfect vehicle for leftovers. I made two--one for breakfast and one for my friend Jayne who just had knee surgery. I had 3 plums, two white nectarines, and one peach that had gotten a little soft in the heat. I should have stored them in the fridge. I wouldn't want to eat them out-of-hand, but they'd be delicious in a galette. And here's the other thing I love about galettes--they are much less of a commitment and require fewer ingredients than a pie or quiche. I could never make a pie out of 5 small pieces of fruit.

For Jayne's, I had a tub of caramelized onions in the fridge from my Sunday fridge-cleaning. I had somehow ended up with a legion of half onions in my produce drawer. I put them all through the food processor so I had a massive pile of thin crescents, then sauteed them down for about 45 minutes. You will definitely NOT want to do this today if you need to allocate more time to complaining about the heat, which I'm planning on doing. I mixed my onions with whole milk ricotta and an egg for a creamy filling. When it came out, I topped it with crumbled feta, fresh lemon thyme from my garden, and some beautiful little arugula spears that had found some shade under my sage plant.

I'm not going to give recipes--surely you've got some things knocking around that need to be rescued and you'll come up with your own wonderful combos. The crust recipe I've always directed you to is here, but this time I used a basic recipe from Gourmet that turned out beautifully flaky and the dough was still easy to work with.

My kids are still asleep as I write, and I'm enjoying the quiet moment before Oscar and Milo come over and Sarah's Day Camp begins. I hope you find a little pocket of time like this today where you can collect yourself, take a deep breath, and remember that the cool evening comes sooner or later.